Depends on how you define a cyborg-but I would say that they are cetainly *cybernetic* in the classical 1950s sense. Failing flesh replaced by heartless, passionless machines to survive in impossible places and times.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
- Location
- The Underdark
Depends on how you count it. My inclination is towards yes, especially once you start looking backwards from the second, third, fourth generation hardware onwards.
Fixed. Sorry about the mistake.
- Location
- Africa
Nod cyborgs a more or less 40k servitors
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's cool. Sorry to bug you so much about these little mistakes. 😅
- Location
- The Underdark
I always struggle with random detail bits. Especially in a game like this one where the mechanics are a lot of fiddly bits.
[X] Complete the Plants
Knowledge, Unburdened and Enlightened (Canon)
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
Knowledge, Unburdened and Enlightened
Inner Sanctum, Threshold 19
Sometime Recently
Everyone had their own mental image of how Kane worked. None were allowed into his inmost sanctum, except for his tech-child LEGION. Thus, mystery bred speculation. From thoughts of gleaming high-tech laboratories, to dank arcane sanctums, and everything in between.
There was an outer "office" space that his inner circle could access, with a handful of chairs to allow them to sit and discuss deep and important matters, and a sleek "interface chair" Kane could sometimes be seen working in. Strange holographic glyphs would be seen hovering over his near-motionless body, even as his eyes were all but glowing white with the power of his technological union with LEGION and the cybernetic assets of the Brotherhood. Such a feature gave an air of otherworldliness to Kane, a hint that his inmost space was even more incredible.
The truth is rather more mundane in many ways. Kane's sanctum is primarily a space for him to have privacy from even his most trusted inner circle, a place to simply be himself. As much as he was ever himself these days.
~-Fire. Screaming metal. Rushing air.-~
There was a bed, a small private bathroom space, and other accouterments for basic upkeep of one's self. Simple but comfortable.
The main feature was a workspace with a large desk featuring a keyboard that was much larger than normal, multiple large monitors on the desk surface, and a small wall of monitors behind. Kane sometimes spent long hours at this desk, working on perfecting both his plans, and the Plan. The chair was the single most indulgent thing in the room, very clearly an exceedingly comfortable masterpiece, with just enough artistry and symbology that Kane could record video messages from this space, for those trusted few he sent such messages to, that is.
Currently he was reviewing one of the primary components of the Plan, one that even his most trusted confidants, at least of the present Brotherhood, had even a hint of. It had become clear this was the only way forward for the Brotherhood, for his plans. The only chance to finally-
Suddenly, one of his monitors flashed a code sequence to catch his attention. As soon as his focus shifted, a text window opened. The opening code lines indicated that he was receiving something from long-buried, long-dormant triggers in some of the oldest data that had been in….CABAL Which meant it was GDI, poking in the broken remains of his lost project.
"Just what did you find, little eaglets?"
Finally, a message flashed on the screen.
++The thunderbolts are loosed++
++The walls have fallen++
++The garden is aflame++
++The shadows are drowned in light++
Kane blinked. Then, he laughed.
"After all this time, and they found it? Well then. If that's how the game board has changed, I suppose I should respond in kind."
~-Earth shakes. Metal snaps. Night falls.-~
"The past is the past, and the future waits for none of us…"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GDI Intelligence Operations Headquarters, London, England
A Couple of Weeks Later
Secretary Hackett was working through a stack of reports when his aide came into the office. The young man was carrying a large white envelope and had a slightly nervous look about him.
"It's clean, sir."
"What do you mean, son? It doesn't look dirty."
"No sir, I mean…it's clean. We scanned it, ran it through the sniffer, all of that. But…"
Hackett stopped and looked at the letter. It had only his title and name on the front. It was paper. Real paper, wood pulp. Slowly, carefully, he reached out and took it, before turning it upside down. There was a wax seal there. The same symbol that former Secretary Granger had seen on his own. Hackett's face was grim as he spoke next, his tone brooking no argument.
"Dismissed."
The aide didn't run out of the room, but it was a near thing. Hackett hesitated for a fraction of a second, then forced the envelope open. The letter inside was, again, real paper; a slightly different texture and thickness, but no mistaking it. It looked and felt a bit more "modern" than what Granger had received.
"And it's encoded. Damn smug bald bastard."
After a half-hour working at the encoding, which ended up being a 13-offset Ceasar Cipher, Hackett had the entire plain-text letter in front of him, alongside the much-fancier ciphered original.
Inner Sanctum, Threshold 19
Sometime Recently
Everyone had their own mental image of how Kane worked. None were allowed into his inmost sanctum, except for his tech-child LEGION. Thus, mystery bred speculation. From thoughts of gleaming high-tech laboratories, to dank arcane sanctums, and everything in between.
There was an outer "office" space that his inner circle could access, with a handful of chairs to allow them to sit and discuss deep and important matters, and a sleek "interface chair" Kane could sometimes be seen working in. Strange holographic glyphs would be seen hovering over his near-motionless body, even as his eyes were all but glowing white with the power of his technological union with LEGION and the cybernetic assets of the Brotherhood. Such a feature gave an air of otherworldliness to Kane, a hint that his inmost space was even more incredible.
The truth is rather more mundane in many ways. Kane's sanctum is primarily a space for him to have privacy from even his most trusted inner circle, a place to simply be himself. As much as he was ever himself these days.
~-Fire. Screaming metal. Rushing air.-~
There was a bed, a small private bathroom space, and other accouterments for basic upkeep of one's self. Simple but comfortable.
The main feature was a workspace with a large desk featuring a keyboard that was much larger than normal, multiple large monitors on the desk surface, and a small wall of monitors behind. Kane sometimes spent long hours at this desk, working on perfecting both his plans, and the Plan. The chair was the single most indulgent thing in the room, very clearly an exceedingly comfortable masterpiece, with just enough artistry and symbology that Kane could record video messages from this space, for those trusted few he sent such messages to, that is.
Currently he was reviewing one of the primary components of the Plan, one that even his most trusted confidants, at least of the present Brotherhood, had even a hint of. It had become clear this was the only way forward for the Brotherhood, for his plans. The only chance to finally-
Suddenly, one of his monitors flashed a code sequence to catch his attention. As soon as his focus shifted, a text window opened. The opening code lines indicated that he was receiving something from long-buried, long-dormant triggers in some of the oldest data that had been in….CABAL Which meant it was GDI, poking in the broken remains of his lost project.
"Just what did you find, little eaglets?"
Finally, a message flashed on the screen.
++The thunderbolts are loosed++
++The walls have fallen++
++The garden is aflame++
++The shadows are drowned in light++
Kane blinked. Then, he laughed.
"After all this time, and they found it? Well then. If that's how the game board has changed, I suppose I should respond in kind."
~-Earth shakes. Metal snaps. Night falls.-~
"The past is the past, and the future waits for none of us…"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GDI Intelligence Operations Headquarters, London, England
A Couple of Weeks Later
Secretary Hackett was working through a stack of reports when his aide came into the office. The young man was carrying a large white envelope and had a slightly nervous look about him.
"It's clean, sir."
"What do you mean, son? It doesn't look dirty."
"No sir, I mean…it's clean. We scanned it, ran it through the sniffer, all of that. But…"
Hackett stopped and looked at the letter. It had only his title and name on the front. It was paper. Real paper, wood pulp. Slowly, carefully, he reached out and took it, before turning it upside down. There was a wax seal there. The same symbol that former Secretary Granger had seen on his own. Hackett's face was grim as he spoke next, his tone brooking no argument.
"Dismissed."
The aide didn't run out of the room, but it was a near thing. Hackett hesitated for a fraction of a second, then forced the envelope open. The letter inside was, again, real paper; a slightly different texture and thickness, but no mistaking it. It looked and felt a bit more "modern" than what Granger had received.
"And it's encoded. Damn smug bald bastard."
After a half-hour working at the encoding, which ended up being a 13-offset Ceasar Cipher, Hackett had the entire plain-text letter in front of him, alongside the much-fancier ciphered original.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The problem with "cyborg" is a term is that the line between cyborg and not-cyborg is blurry. You can make a case anyone who uses glasses, a smartphone, a computer or really any piece of technology is a cyborg. You can draw the line where you want. Under my personal definition no, based on factors I myself cannot explain.
I understand you can call anyone with a plate in their head a cyborg. But I agree. For me the line is removing a perfectly good organ for an artificial replacement, that is where one calls someone a cyborg.
- Location
- alphen aan den rijn
using that then makes anyone who had a mechanical impart/transplant a cyborg.
but anyone using 1 gen optical implants dev cyborg. hope the market and a number of R&D groups make it at least somewhat less bulky thing
I believe in pure definition anyone with artificial parts that produce feedback is a cyborg.
In my heart someone doesn't earn the cyborg title till its a choice, ie adding parts they do not need to achieve normal-ish human functionality. IE a true cyborg is trying for superhuman capability in my eyes.
- Location
- NorthEast
So I just read the new sidestory.
What is he referring to? What is this playwright? GDI has CABAL? Kane has the Tacitus and LEGION?
What am i missing in all of this?
What is he referring to? What is this playwright? GDI has CABAL? Kane has the Tacitus and LEGION?
What am i missing in all of this?
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
The overall Omake is, essentially, Kane finding out and reacting to the fact that GDI decoded the historical information copied from the Tacitus and other sources to figure out his true nature, as detailed in this update.
The little poetic bit about "thunderbolts are loosed" is just a code-phrase notification GDI read those documents.
So the musings he's making out loud are basically "nifty, they figured it out". He then sent Secretary Hackett, aka Head of InOps, a letter basically taunting him that Kane knows that they know.
The "playwright" line is a reference to Hamilton because I'm a dork. Specifically, the last lyrics of the song "We Know", expressing the idea of "You know, I know, I know that you know, and You know that I know that you know. So what now?".
GDI does not have CABAL, CABAL is destroyed.
Kane has had the Tacitus since near the beginning of the Quest, same as LEGION. That's not a change.
You're not really "missing" anything. I'm just having some fun writing Kane screwing with Hackett's head just a bit.
The little poetic bit about "thunderbolts are loosed" is just a code-phrase notification GDI read those documents.
So the musings he's making out loud are basically "nifty, they figured it out". He then sent Secretary Hackett, aka Head of InOps, a letter basically taunting him that Kane knows that they know.
The "playwright" line is a reference to Hamilton because I'm a dork. Specifically, the last lyrics of the song "We Know", expressing the idea of "You know, I know, I know that you know, and You know that I know that you know. So what now?".
GDI does not have CABAL, CABAL is destroyed.
Kane has had the Tacitus since near the beginning of the Quest, same as LEGION. That's not a change.
You're not really "missing" anything. I'm just having some fun writing Kane screwing with Hackett's head just a bit.
- Location
- Norway
"Cyborg" was short for "cybernetic organ[ism]", and while the word "cybernetic" has been abused by a lot of people similar to "quantum" to make things sound impressive and sciency, the original derivation of the term implied an element of feedback and self-adjustment in the system. It reacts to stimuli, and self-regulates so that it 'steers' towards a specific state.
This suggests to me a more interesting line to draw:
it's cybernetics/cyborg when 1) the device is physically integrated into the body, and 2) the device reacts to the environment in some deliberate teleological way that its component materials don't.
Glasses fail both of these points. Contact lenses pass 1 (barely), but still fail 2. A smartphone fails 1, but can pass 2.
An insulin pump makes a cyborg, fulfilling both 1 and 2. Depending on the exact model.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
About that.
You forgot to budget for our line item expenses like the Bureau of Arcologies and the grants.
We start with (assuming 25% GDP) 655 RpT of income, spend 165 RpT on line items, then tap into the 145 R of savings we have available, which doesn't count the banking reserves since we can't use those. The end result is 635
So that's "what is up my math." I remembered that we have fixed line item expenses, which you have not taken into account. We may not have to pay for all of them in 2062Q1, which would be lovely, but in that case I can just easily add items to the budget.
Eh, you never know. She might be having trouble with her negotiations with the Bannerjees, or something else that's not her fault. But I take your meaning.
[grunts]
Well, the extreme degree of Military idle dice makes me nervous-unhappy, especially when the Ferro-Aluminum Refits project is right there... And I'm also not thrilled to be leaving Free dice fallow when we could be using them to mine more tiberium. It leaves us deeper in this income-trap pit in the long run. The microfusion cell and rushing poulticeplant research (when we're likely to have significant 10 R/die Agricultural plan targets to hit) are not, in my opinion, worth it, though the fusion power improvements arguably are.
I strongly endorse Knight on this. From the way this is being discussed, GDI managing to store two years' worth of surplus food, while difficult, is not out of the question. It is not unrealistic, and there are arguments in favor of something broadly that ambitious. I hope we never need it, but in the event of a truly destructive war laying waste to much of our infrastructure (including, say, Entari-targeting bioweapons), it could actually take years for us to get back up to food sufficiency. It's hard to say.
I think the demands for extremely ambitious Stored Food targets are arguably excessive and likely suboptimal, but if there is genuine popular support for such an undertaking, then I for one don't plan to stand in the way or resent what the people want.
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Shadows
Sacred Priestess of the Benevolent Dice Gods
- Location
- USS Civilian, DDG-214
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The FA Refits can be done at virtually any time. I do want to get them done this FY.
We may have significant Ag commitments after reallocation but we have not, as yet, gone through that, so the Poulticeplant Development project was more of an idle wish. The MFC dev is something I am deeply interested in pursuing and also plan to pursue ASAP. It was in my last plan, and I don't see it leaving my plans until we actually do it.
As far as idle dice in Mil - it's going to happen, and 2062Q1 is the best time for it to do so. If I thought I'd get away with it I'd leave Mil entirely fallow save for a ZA factory and throw all the money on Tib harvesting this turn.
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Aluminum armor refits are in a really weird place, strategically.
Our military is so hilariously overfunded that they basically won't even move the needle on military effectiveness. So the refits should be done if and only if they aren't offlining non-military dice to do them.
So we basically need to be in a place where we have enough resources to be able to afford to throw them at a vanity project that would otherwise auto-complete in around three years, but not enough resources that we'd prefer to spend those dice on a more valued military project. Which is a very, very narrow band.
Our military is so hilariously overfunded that they basically won't even move the needle on military effectiveness. So the refits should be done if and only if they aren't offlining non-military dice to do them.
So we basically need to be in a place where we have enough resources to be able to afford to throw them at a vanity project that would otherwise auto-complete in around three years, but not enough resources that we'd prefer to spend those dice on a more valued military project. Which is a very, very narrow band.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I suspect if it was just a vanity project, it wouldn't be on the docket.
I see this as the time to do it.
If he does, we'll be able to justify scaling back Military dice spending for the entire rest of the Plan. If he doesn't, I want us prepared for an aggressive go-ahead with systems like SADN to protect ourselves, which means at least trying to stay as close to 8/8 on Military dice as we reasonably can, though I say no more than 8/8, no 9/8 or 10/8 or whatever without a hell of a good reason.
If we're not going to do them now in 2062Q1-Q2, we're never going to do them, except at a painfully uneconomical and slow pace through the Bureau of Refits (which may well take up a 'slot' and prevent the Bureau from doing some other refit that's got a higher ratio of R cost to Progress cost, making it more worthwhile to pay 30 RpT for +30 Progress on the total cluster of projects.
I see this as the time to do it.
The way I see it, either Kane shows up and negotiates in 2062 or he doesn't.
If he does, we'll be able to justify scaling back Military dice spending for the entire rest of the Plan. If he doesn't, I want us prepared for an aggressive go-ahead with systems like SADN to protect ourselves, which means at least trying to stay as close to 8/8 on Military dice as we reasonably can, though I say no more than 8/8, no 9/8 or 10/8 or whatever without a hell of a good reason.
Willing to invest into the research of the monitor after how the assault ships didn't require more slip space investment?
Shadows
Sacred Priestess of the Benevolent Dice Gods
- Location
- USS Civilian, DDG-214
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The military can go 1 turn on minimal while we fight all the other fires. They've eaten by far the most resources of any department. We're not planning aggressive stuff til Karachi - in 2063/4. We can hold off one quarter.
Regardless, it's a draft plan. We'll see what our material conditions are after Reallocation.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
In a turn or two. 20 R/die projects are toughies, and basically nothing except zone armor factories is important enough to me to get any Military investment at that rate in 2062Q1, unless we end up with a lot more money than I think likely or even plausible.
Note that I'm also not going to be trying to finish the Seattle frigate yard. Same reason, much as it grates on me.
They can. At the same time, Ferro-Aluminum Armor Refits is a project we'll probably never try at any other time than now and maybe 2062Q2 or so- if we're not willing to do it now, it shouldn't even be on the docket. I'd sooner give up the single 20 R/die die on Zone Armor factories and fan the budget for it across three or four ferro-aluminum dice, honestly.
Also, some of the things you're budgeting for just don't feel like they fit the narrative of "fighting the fires" to me, so I'm not really feeling the appeal to urgency.
Ferro-aluminum armor is probably going to auto-complete in the coming plan. Whether through the auto-refits department, or by updating the various platforms to use it (i.e. all new and upgraded models already use ferro aluminum armor as appropriate, and the latter reduce the total refits required).
It's a great project for an emergency crash upgrade, but it isn't all that useful to throw extra dice and resources at it to complete it a couple years early when we're expecting things to be relatively peaceful (thanks to our overwhelming military might, and Nod's threat to go nuclear if we use it).
If we absolutely have to put resources into the military, I'd prefer it to be on projects that won't complete on their own. With the possible exception of the first phase of railgun munitions, to pre-empt political pressure.
It's a great project for an emergency crash upgrade, but it isn't all that useful to throw extra dice and resources at it to complete it a couple years early when we're expecting things to be relatively peaceful (thanks to our overwhelming military might, and Nod's threat to go nuclear if we use it).
If we absolutely have to put resources into the military, I'd prefer it to be on projects that won't complete on their own. With the possible exception of the first phase of railgun munitions, to pre-empt political pressure.
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